The Language Barrera

Just in time to meet this month's "Wow, That Came Out of Nowhere" quota, I actually sat down with a few lawyers in a law firm for an actual honest-to-God job interview on Thursday.

I believe the interview went well. That said, I also believe that waitresses are always hitting on me and that what I have with Candy down at Kuma's is unlike anything else she has with any of her other patrons.

But positive thoughts, people.

This is a big law firm that specializes in international law and routinely hires foreigners. The reason they like me, I gather, is that I speak four languages (It certainly was not the chest hair peeking out above the tie). And since these guys do a lot of business with Latin America, my ability to speak a little bit of Spanish was certainly a point in my favor.

I am kind of not kidding when I say "a little bit of Spanish."

See, I interviewed with a handful of people and almost all of them conducted their interview with me in Spanish, or -- as it is otherwise known -- my native tongue and the one I grew up using for 18 years.

I am not exaggerating when I say having an interview in Spanish was perhaps the most difficult thing I've ever done relating to legal employment. Good Lord, was that tough to do.

You would have thought that interviewing in my own native tongue would have been a piece of cake. I would have thought so too.

But it wasn't. Maybe it was the fact that I've been here for seven years. Maybe it's that I haven't visited home in 9 months. Maybe it's the lack of Mexicans in Boston. Maybe it's that I have never used Spanish in the legal context before.

Whatever it was, I stammered and stuttered my way through something that should have been second first nature. It went something like this:

Them: Hola!
Me: . . .
My Brain: OH SHIT! How do you say that in Spanish?
Me: . . .
Them: (Smiling)
Me: (Smiling)
My Brain: Ohshitohshitohshitohshit. What's the word for that?
Them: (Smiling but now also kind of frowning)
Me: TEQUILA!

And so on and so forth.

After the umpteenth time that I took an American idiom and translated it to Spanish in a literal way that rendered a phrase that does not exist and does not make sense, one of the interviewers actually asked me if I was thinking in English. "Of course!" I blurted.

It was the truth. I am not sure whether this is a good or bad thing. What I am sure of, however, is how happy I am that they did not ask me how you say "Defendant" or, worse, "Plaintiff" in Spanish. Someone asked me that today and I still could not tell you what those words translate to if my life depended on it.

Do you see now why it is imperative that I remain in America?

I like to think that my thinking in English was a point in my favor, showing command of a language that is not my own to the point where it has been wholly internalized and become part of my nature.

It's a nice thought to have.

Just don't ask me to say that again in Spanish.